steeper and the summit platform broader. On embankments thus reformed out of their original materials respectable as well as sufficient sites would be provided for long-joint-tenement houses, comparted into chambers like stalls opening upon a central passage way through the structure from end to end, as in the long-houses of the Iroquois. Such embankments were strikingly adapted to houses of the aboriginal American model, the characteristic feature of which was sufficient length to afford a number of apartments. This feature became more marked in the houses of the Village Indians, among whom houses three hundred, four hundred, and even five hundred feet in length have been found, as elsewhere stated.
These embankments answered as a substitute for the first story of the house constructed of adobe bricks, which was usually from ten to twelve feet high, and closed up solid on the ground, externally. The gateways entering the square were protected, it may be supposed, with palisades of round timber set in the ground, each row of stakes commencing at the opposite ends of the embankments and contracting after passing each other to a narrow opening on the inside, which might be permanently closed. Indian tribes in a lower condition than the Mound-Builders were familiar with palisades. The inclosed square was thus completely protected by the long-houses standing upon these embankments and the gateways guarding the several entrances. The pueblo, externally, would present continuous ramparts of earth ten feet high, around an inclosed area, surmounted with timber-framed houses with walls sloping like the embankments, and coated with earth mixed with clay and gravel, rising ten or twelve feet above their summits; the two forming a sloping wall of earth twenty feet high. It seems extremely probable, for the reasons stated, that they raised these embankments as foundations, and planted their long-houses upon them, thus uniting the defensive principle with that of communism in living. Such houses would harmonize with the general plan of life of the American aborigines, and with the general type of their house architecture.
It is not necessary to know the exact form or internal plan of these houses in order to establish this hypothesis. It is sufficient to show that these embankments as restored were not only adapted, but admirably adapted, to joint-tenement houses of the aboriginal American type.
